The present invention generally relates to the area of operating a computer system, and more particularly relates to methods and apparatus for operating a host computer from a portable apparatus.
An operating environment with familiar applications is desirable for many computer users. A familiar operating environment may include a set of applications, such as Internet browser, email software, text editor, presentation software, and spreadsheet application, along with parameter settings for those applications, such as home page and favorites for browser, incoming/outgoing accounts for email software, style-sheets for text editor, and templates for presentation and spreadsheet applications. More importantly, a familiar operating environment may also include a set of personal files generated from those applications. Those files are usually valuable and irreplaceable to a computer user. Therefore, how to maintain a consistent operating environment during the modifications of software and/or hardware has been considered as a critical issue.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,438,749 issued to Chamberlain discloses a way to restore a computer to its original state after an unsuccessful software patch. U.S. Pat. No. 6,633,977 issued to Hamilton et al. discloses a duplication process to duplicate the user environment data from the old workstation to the new workstation. Both methods attempt to preserve the software configuration on an identical or similar hardware environment. The disclosed methods do not address how to transport an operating environment among multiple computer systems with different hardware configurations.
U.S. Pub. No. 2003/0110371 to Yang et al. discloses a method to partially maintain a consistent operating environment by utilizing a USB flash memory device to store the user-specific information from a first computer system. The stored information will be temporarily loaded from the USB drive into the same application in a second computer system. This method attempts to transport the personalized computer settings among computer systems with an identical or similar software environment. This method neither discloses how to transport a set of familiar applications among computer systems nor how to transport a set of personal files associated with the applications among computer systems.
A possible approach to maintain a consistent operating environment is to store an operating system along with a list of software applications and personal files in a removable data storage medium, which is then used to operate different computers. This approach can be considered as using a portable apparatus to operate one or more host computers. The portability here not only means the physical mobility of the device but also means the adaptation of the system to operate host computers with different hardware configurations. Accordingly, the host computer needs to be able to boot from the portable apparatus.
An operating system together with a list of software applications and personal files may be burned to a CD-ROM. The ISO 9660 specification, a bootable CD-ROM format, provides new boot capabilities for personal computers. The ISO 9600 specification describes how the BIOS boot procedure can be enhanced to support the CD-ROM using INT 13 calling conventions for enabling the CD-ROM to boot as the “A” drive or “C” drive without device drivers. U.S. Pat. No. 6,122,734 issued to Jeon discloses a bootable CD-ROM disk manufacturing system. The disclosed CD-ROM limits the users' ability to modify or delete the software applications, to install new applications, and to store personal files on the CD-ROM.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,016,402 issued to Thomas et al. discloses a method of integrating a removable media disk drive into an operating system where the removable media disk drive is first recognized as a fixed disk type then recognized as a floppy disk type. U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,600 issued to Khenson et al. discloses an apparatus for booting a computer using a removable medium disk drive. U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,707 issued to Maffezzoni discloses an apparatus for copying files between drives of a computer system including an operating system to create a reliable bootable drive. However, the use of a bootable medium drive in these methods and apparatus is restricted to providing diagnostic support or backup in the event of a system failure, which only requires access to the file system in the internal hard drive of a problematic computer instead of fully operating a computer system and its peripheral devices.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,170,055 issued to Meyer et al. discloses an approach to create a subset of an operating system from a computer in a removable high capacity media disk drive for disaster recovery of the computer. The removable high capacity media includes all necessary operating system components to completely load the operating system and the graphical user interface and to provide a user with access to all computer peripherals. Since the removable high capacity disk includes all of the machine-specific files for a computer system, this rescue disk is only suitable for operating the original computer system or computers with similar hardware configurations.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,601,139 issued to Suzuki discloses an information processing apparatus based on the single medium activated platform architecture operated by a removable data storage medium containing all necessary software and content. A second removable data storage medium with different software and content can also operate the same apparatus. However, the removable data storage media are designed to operate the information processing apparatus with a specific architecture instead of computers with different hardware configurations.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,718,463 issued to Malik discloses an apparatus and method for booting a data processing system from a removable medium. A first boot will identify the file system of a first data processing system and the file system of the removable medium. The necessary drivers, registry information, and applications needed to operate the hardware of the first data processing system will then be copied into the removable medium. The removable medium with the copied hardware information will be ready to boot a second data processing system, which has a similar hardware configuration to the first data processing system. U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0019778 to Gere also discloses a method and system for implementing a transportable operating system boot environment on a computer system by impressing a hardware and software configuration information onto a stored operating system environment. Both approaches create complete hardware controllable environments for specific computers on a portable apparatus, which may restrict the portability of the apparatus to only a few host computers since the required drivers and their parameter settings may cause confusion when the number of host computers increases. Although Malik discloses a way to clear up the copied information, the overhead of copying information in order to establish a bootable environment will tremendously increase the processing time for booting up a host computer.
In sum, although there are various methods for booting a computer system using a removable medium disk drive, there exists no simple and convenient method to adapt a portable apparatus to a plurality of host computers. As such there is a need in the art for an efficient way to establish an operating environment in host computers using a portable apparatus. In particular, the host computers may be public host computers in schools, libraries, Internet cafés, business lounges at airports, and other places.